Hanuman sat up abruptly and realised with relief he was not falling from the skies. He had never been a light sleeper. Quite the opposite in fact. Until a few months ago, when life was predictable, even his afternoon naps had been legendary. Then the two princes turned up at Rishyamukh Mountain and things had changed.

Ever since his leap to Lanka and back, he had been particularly twitchy. Even last night, he had woken up after an uncomfortable dream involving Singhika, the sea demoness he had to fight and kill on his way to Raavan’s land. Besides, he always felt like a fool sitting up sweating and breathless in the centre of a camp full of snoring vaanars.

The goat chewed absent-mindedly as a small group on the other side of the stable made merry. A bull, flanked on either side by a brown horse, was saying, “Her skin was like milk and her neck was like marble.” His friends approved of the direction the story was going in by mooing and bleating their general appreciation. The bull continued, “She nuzzled my neck, ‘Mahabali, take me! Make me a cow,’ she said.”

“This is what Ayodhya is coming to,” said a displeased voice from behind the goat. The goat turned and momentarily stopped chewing. A beautiful cow stood in front of him. There was hay in her mouth but she wasn’t chewing. She looked holy.

Kashyap the tortoise slowly made the curve and stepped into the well-lit shallow waters just south of Bharatvarsha.

This side of the sea seemed calmer than the Lankan side, where his ancestral home was. Life there had been steadily growing hard to bear. He had found the bickering among the sea-serpents too much for his old heart to bear. The last straw came when some of the bulkier daityas took to living under water. As if their stench was not enough, they kept complaining about the salinity levels.

Dashrath held the grape against the light filtering in through the playhouse curtains. It looked almost transparent. After making sure he had the undivided attention of baby Rama sitting on his left thigh, Dashrath moved it to the young prince’s mouth.

Rama opened his mouth wide. Dashrath quickly put the grape in his own mouth and chewed into it with an overdone show of relish. Rama gurgled with laughter.

The king took another grape and did the same, teasing Rama to the last moment and then throwing the grape into his own mouth. Rama laughed again and opened his mouth wide.

It was one of the quieter afternoons. I realised there were more squirrels around than usual. Then I realised they were all looking at me. What I didn’t realise was that there was an even larger number of them on the neighbouring trees. Every one of them was looking at me.

Most of them were not even from any place nearby. I knew pretty much all of the squirrels near my house. They usually sat on ledges and waited for biscuit crumbs. And there were only two of them, a couple by the looks of it.

The squirrel was old. He was older than most squirrels he knew, a fact that didn’t rest easy on his heart. On the brighter side, the gods had blessed him with the monkey’s friendship. The monkey prepared crushed walnuts for him. Things worked out nicely.

The squirrel had parts of the day it looked forward to. When the birds returned at sunset from their day’s foraging, they told him of all the things they had seen as they flew over Himavat and beyond. One of the younger birds came to him every day and stayed for hours, chirping away without a pause about what her day was like. When she tired, the squirrel told her many stories from back when he had been young and had roamed the land. She listened with patience (she preferred talking to listening) until her mother sang to her from above that it was time to nest for the night.